simon bowland

I'll admit that I'm a pretty easy mark when it comes to high concepts, but I'd like to think that I'm at least a little picky about how they actually play out. Like, if you were to tell me that there's a story about an old but hard-boiled cop in charge of upholding a 500 year-old treaty between London and Hell, I'd be intrigued, but I'd have to admit that it could go either way. If, however, you then told me that the story also involved a kid fighting demons with a combination of parkour and Gymkata --- the famous martial art that combines the skill of gymnastics with the kill of karate --- then that's pretty much that. I am in.

Fortunately for me, a story matching that exact description is hitting shelves this week in the pages of 2000 AD in Prog 1934: Absalom: Under A False Flag, the newest installment of Gordon Rennie, Tiernen Trevallian and Simon Bowland's supernatural crime drama --- and you can read the entire first installment as a preview right here!

As a Briton living overseas, I am always delighted to see people from the old country shamelessly milk their Britishness to sell themselves abroad. The more we ham it up, the more people seem to love it, as evidenced by Eddie Redmayne's Oscar win. So it's in that same glorious spirit that Titan Comics is playing up the "Downton Abbey and crumpets" angle for its May comics promotion, Best of British, featuring new and classic works from a roster of creators that includes Peter Milligan, Si Spurrier, Alan Martin, D'Israeli, and the late Brett Ewins. Check out the trailer above, debuting exclusively on ComicsAlliance.

Of all the comics that could indulge in one of my beloved Holiday Specials, Flash Gordon seems like a pretty unlikely candidate. I mean, now that I think of it, if comics can give us that story where Superboy gets caught up in the Christmas Spirit and decides to get the Legion of Super-Heroes to hunt down the star that the Magi followed to the manger and ends up rescuing a race of alien bird-people from a flood in what can only very charitably be called a miracle, I guess you can wring a little holiday cheer out of just about anything. Still, the adventures of three humans trapped in an alien empire full of tree monsters and beast-men doesn't quite seem like it would easily lend itself to the spirit of the season.

And yet, that's exactly what the folks at Dynamite have done with the new Flash Gordon Holiday Special one-shot, and while I could not possibly be more in the target audience for this thing -- my interest in space adventure is only outstripped by my love of Christmas -- it's well worth picking up.

As it is prone to do perhaps more often than some of its American competition, British sci-fi weekly 2000 AD has designed its latest issue to be especially welcoming to new readers. Four brand new stories begin in this week's 2000 AD Prog 1850, each meant to introduce audiences to the unique blend of art, attitude and insanity that can typically be found every week in "the galaxy's greatest comic." Among them, a new Judge Dredd strip as well as new work by Al Ewing (Mighty Avengers), Pat Mills (Marshal Law), Ian Edginton (Victorian Undead), and INJ Culbard (The New Deadwardians).

The new-reader-friendly prog is part of a concentrated effort to raise awareness of 2000 AD and Judge Dredd in particular so as to persuade the powers that be that a Dredd movie sequel is something they should put into production at once. That effort includes an official Dreddsequel petition and the latest issue of Judge Dredd Megazine, which introduces a new strip that will continues the continuity of the cult favorite Karl Urban film.

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